Commonly, firefighters, rescue workers, and other workers, such as construction workers and forestry workers, are equipped with bulky, heavy ropes, which they must carry in their hands or on their shoulders while walking, climbing, or working. Such ropes tend to imbalance the firefighters or other workers who have to carry such ropes. A need has been recognized, which was addressed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,012,167 and to which this invention is addressed, for a better way for such workers to carry bulky, heavy ropes without becoming imbalanced, while freeing their hands.
The inventors named herein are aware that another party made a recent attempt to address the need by fastening two strips of an essentially inelastic fabric to an inner surface of a back portion of an outer body of a coat for a firefighter, the outer body having been made from a similarly inelastic fabric, by fastening the strips so as to define an upper series of sleeves and a lower series of sleeves, and by instructing a user to insert loops of the rope through sleeves of the upper series and through sleeves of the lower series. The inventors named herein believe, however, that the recent attempt was unsuccessful because the rope could not be readily removed.